Evolutionary Ethics from Darwin to Moore - Why are you here? This

Evolutionary Ethics from Darwin to Moore

Fritz Allhoff

Department of Philosophy,University of California,

Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA

ABSTRACT - Evolutionary ethics has a long history, dating all the way back to CharlesDarwin.1 Almost immediately after the publication of the Origin, an immense interestarose in the moral implications of Darwinism and whether the truth of Darwinism wouldundermine traditional ethics. Though the biological thesis was certainly exciting, nobodysuspected that the impact of the Origin would be confined to the scientific arena. As onehistorian wrote, ‘whether or not ancient populations of armadillos were transformed intothe species that currently inhabit the new world was certainly a topic about whichzoologists could disagree. But it was in discussing the broader implications of thetheory…that tempers flared and statements were made which could transform whatotherwise would have been a quiet scholarly meeting into a social scandal’ (Farber 1994,22). Some resistance to the biological thesis of Darwinism sprung from the thought thatit was incompatible with traditional morality and, since one of them had to go, manythought that Darwinism should be rejected. However, some people did realize that asecular ethics was possible so, even if Darwinism did undermine traditional religiousbeliefs, it need not have any effects on moral thought.2

Before I begin my discussion of evolutionary ethics from Darwin to Moore, I wouldlike to make some more general remarks about its development.3 There are three keyevents during this history of evolutionary ethics. First, Charles Darwin published On theOrigin of the Species (Darwin 1859). Since one did not have a fully developed theory of

Hist. Phil. Life Sci., 25 (2003), 83-111 ---83

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* Portions of this paper have been presented at the meeting of the International Society for thePhilosophy, History, and Social Studies of Biology (Vienna, Austria, 2003), and at the InternationalCongress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (Oviedo, Spain, 2003). In addition to theconference participants, I would like to thank Michael Bradie, Matthew Hanser, Richard Glatz, and twoanonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.

1 It could even be argued that evolutionary ethics has its origins before Darwin, most plausibly in theworks of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume. Certainly many of Hobbes’s writings echo ideas present inmodern day sociobiology, and Hume’s empiricism is also congenial to naturalized approaches to morality.

2 John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism was published in 1861, just two years after the Origin and receiveda tremendous reception within British society. As Kant was less known within Great Britain, and oftenunavailable in translation, Mill offered the first widely available attempt at secular ethics.

3 It should also be observed that there were historical contributions from continental sources, mostnotably Lamarck and Haeckel. While these thinkers made valuable (and creative!) contributions to thedebate, I shall nonetheless largely exclude them from my discussion, though certainly someone shouldwrite about them. Within contemporary philosophy of biology, these thinkers have probably been lessinfluential, though this is no doubt because most contemporary philosophers of biology have radiatedfrom the Anglo-American tradition. The views that I will consider are therefore more representative ofthe historical influence upon many contemporary theorists, though this phenomenon certainly carries nonormative weight

evolution until 1859, there exists little work on evolutionary ethics until then.4 Shortlythereafter, Herbert Spencer (1898) penned the first systematic theory of evolutionaryethics, which was promptly attacked by T.H. Huxley (Huxley 1894). Second, at aboutthe turn of the century, moral philosophers entered the fray and attempted todemonstrate logical errors in Spencer’s work; such errors were alluded to but never fullybrought to the fore by Huxley. These philosophers were the well known moralists fromCambridge: Henry Sidgwick (Sidgwick 1902, 1907) and G.E. Moore (Moore 1903),though their ideas hearkened back to David Hume (Hume 1960). These criticisms wereso strong that the industry of evolutionary ethics was largely abandoned (though withsome exceptions) for many years.5 Third, E.O. Wilson, a Harvard entomologist,published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis in 1975 (Wilson E.O. 1975), which sparkedrenewed interest in evolutionary ethics and offered new directions of investigation. Theseevents suggest the following stages for the history of evolutionary ethics: development,criticism and abandonment, revival. In this paper, I shall focus on the first two stages,since those are the ones on which the philosophical merits have already been largelydecided. The revival stage is still in progress and we shall eventually find out whether itwas a success.

1. Charles Darwin

In constructing a history of evolutionary ethics, it is only appropriateto start with Darwin himself. Darwin’s legacy certainly lies in hiscontributions to science, but morality was always a topic in which hewas very interested; his journals and correspondences often discuss thetopic.6 In his published work, however, Darwin did not mentionmorality until he published The Descent of Man in 1871. Oddly,Darwin did not even discuss humans at all in the Origin, aside fromthe one prophetic claim that ‘light will be thrown on the origin of manand his history’ (Darwin 1871, 488). He certainly was aware of theimplications his theory would have for humans, yet he chose not tomake his first great work more controversial than necessary.7 When he

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4 If there was an exception to this claim, it would be found in the work of Charles Darwin’sgrandfather, Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus was an early evolutionist, and his moral views were borne fromhis evolution, though neither his version of evolution nor his thoughts on morality were systematic orvery convincing. See (Darwin E. 1803, 295-314). Michael Ruse also discusses Erasmus Darwin’s views(Ruse 1999, 435-437).

5 In fact, some have argued that evolutionary ethics was not only abandoned, but presumed dead.See Ruse 1986a, 95-112.

6 Fortunately for historians, nearly all of Darwin’s private writings have been preserved. See (DarwinF. 1969). His private journals have also been published as Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1830-44, ed. P.Barrett et al. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986). In addition to being interested in the genesis ofmorality, Darwin was also very much repulsed by slavery, and criticized the practice often. Many yearsafter leaving South America, where he saw slavery, he wrote ‘distant screams’ still reminded him of theterrible conditions under which slaves lived. Darwin (1986), p. 496.

7 All Darwin’s life, he had an immense dislike of conflict and never wanted to rock the boat. He evenheld off publication of the Origin for over twenty years, many of which he spent researching barnacles,

finally did turn to humans in the Descent, his theory of evolution bynatural selection had already gained substantial support, thoughcertainly there were still detractors. In this later work, an entirechapter was dedicated exclusively to Darwin’s thoughts on morality.

When scholars have considered Darwin’s thoughts on morality, theyhave focused on his discussions in the Descent, which are primarilyabout the evolution of man’s ‘moral sense’. Even this treatment,however, is far from systematic, and contains long and frequentdigressions into anthropological claims about various societies. Forthese reasons, Darwin has never received much attention as a moralthinker, and most histories of evolutionary ethics typically begin withhis contemporary and countryman, Herbert Spencer. I think that thesecustoms, both the focus on the Descent and the marginalization ofDarwin’s views on ethics, are unfortunate for two reasons. First, Darwinclearly discussed morality in other writings, most particularly his ‘M’(metaphysical) notebook. Secondly, I think that he actually comes closerto recognizing the significance of evolution for ethics than later writers(especially Spencer), and he certainly avoids making their logical errors.

Darwin kept many notebooks and, while the ‘D’ notebook wasdevoted to his scientific theory, his ‘M’ notebook was devoted to itswider consequences.8 Both of these notebooks were begun in 1838,the year he first conceived evolution by natural selection, andtherefore predate the Descent by over three decades. Though there islittle in the way of cohesive argumentation, we can at least surmisesome of Darwin’s general ideas. He certainly thought that theevolution of morality was something that was to be explainedhistorically, by a discussion of the natural history of man. Just asevolutionary forces led to the development of the eye, so they also didto the development of morality. Moral philosophers might find this tobe an odd use of the word morality, that morality itself has nothing todo with the development of humans, or even that morality need notrequire humans at all. Darwin certainly did not think that actualmoral obligation was created by evolution, rather he thought thatman’s ‘moral sense’ was shaped by evolutionary pressures. Therefore,some people might rather look at Darwin’s comments on the moral

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because of his anxiety as to how his work would be received. It was only after another evolutionist,Alfred Russel Wallace, appeared to be closing in on Darwin’s theory of natural selection that he finallyrushed to the presses.

8 Desmond and Moore 1991, 258. He even wrote in his ‘M’ notebook that ‘Origin of man nowproved.–Metaphysics must flourish.–He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysicsthan Locke.’ Notebooks M74.

sense as a discussion of moral psychology and its origins, rather thanhaving to do with morality itself. However, it is not clear that Darwin,or even contemporary philosophers who adopt a naturalized approachto morality, would really see a difference. In fact, everything that hewrites is consistent with, though not necessarily suggestive of,objective morality being completely illusory.

Darwin never actually says what he means by moral sense, but hisexamples seem pretty clearly to suggest that what he has in mind areour intuitions, natural sympathies, and ‘moral’ emotions (e.g., shame,anger, pride, vengeance, etc.).9 The development of the moral sense hesees as being clearly connected to the nature of man as a social animal;he thought that, given any social animal, the development of a moralsense was inevitable.10 But why? Certainly the moral sense helps tocreate social cohesion and more harmonious living. For example, theintuition that theft is wrong, coupled with the guilt that such an act canbe expected to produce, means that we are less likely to steal than wewould absent our moral sense (and lack of theft makes for more a moredesirable social existence). Given the societal (not individual!) benefitsof the moral sense, he thought that evolution could have taken instinctsfrom our ancestors and gradually strengthened them over time,eventually reaching the powerful moral sense that we currently possess.Darwin went so far as to say that from natural instincts alone, it waspossible to derive ‘all that is most beautiful in the moral sentiments.’11

Since these ideas were kept in Darwin’s private journals, the generalpubic was obviously not aware of them. However, in the yearsbetween Darwin’s publications of the Origin and the Descent, someothers began to wonder what implications natural selection mighthave for morality, and these ideas did become widely available.Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, wrote an article in a popularmagazine which discussed the heredity of mental and moralcharacteristics (Galton 1865). Galton wondered whether the operationof natural selection could be extended from physical traits to mentaland moral ones. If these latter traits could confer advantages in thestruggle for existence (and if they were heritable), there would be noreason to think that natural selection could not select for them.12 Also

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9 For example, he writes that we have our emotions, like revenge and anger, because they benefitedour ancestors. Notebooks M122-123.

10 Notebooks M120-121.11 Notebooks N5.12 Walter, Bagehot, These articles were later republished in his Physics and Politics, or Thoughts on

the Application of the Principles of ‘Natural Selection’ and ‘Inheritance’ to Political Society (London: H. S.King, 1872).

in the late 1860’s, Walter Bagehot argued that ‘virtues’ such asobedience, honesty, and valor offered survival advantages and couldtherefore be the results of natural selection (Farber 1994, 15).

With the publication of the Descent, Darwin finally laid out hisviews on morality and made them known to the general public. Thiswork tackled the thorny issue of the evolution of man, which Darwinknew was going to be just as controversial as his theory of naturalselection. In it, he presented evidence for the similarities between manand other animals, and he claimed that, of all the animals, man wasmost closely related to chimpanzees and gorillas. But, forphilosophers, the most interesting part of the book is most likely thefourth chapter, which he dedicated exclusively to discussion of man’smoral sense. The ideas that Darwin presented here are perhapssomewhat more mild than the ones which he offered in his privatejournals (which is certainly understandable!), but they are also moresystematic.

He begins this chapter by recognizing the significance of the moralsense: ‘[O]f all the differences between man and the lower animals,the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important.’(Darwin1871, 100) This is also the closest that Darwin comes to saying exactlywhat he means by the moral sense, which he equates to ourconscience. As I said above, I think that our intuitions, naturalsympathies, and our moral emotions are the features thatcontemporary moral philosophers would most readily associate withDarwin’s conception of the moral sense but, for him, all of these weretied into the notion of conscience. The evolution of morality was, forDarwin, the evolution of man’s conscience.13

Also in the way of preliminaries, Darwin speculates that ‘any animalwhatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental andfilial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moralsense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become aswell, or nearly as well endowed, as in man.’ (Darwin 1871, 100)Though it is doubtful that he had any scientific data to substantiatethis claim, it is interesting to see that Darwin saw morality asnecessarily emerging from the coupling of social instincts withintellect.14 So long as we grant that all social beings will have socialinstincts, which seems likely, it would therefore be impossible forintelligent beings to not feel the pull of morality. This conclusion


13 For a similar view, see (Thompson 1999, 475-476).14 There could, I suppose, be social instincts without intellect, such as the instincts of the worker bee

to serve the queen.

would be consistent with recent studies by anthropologists, who havenoted that no human society has been observed to completely lackmoral norms (though the norms themselves vary somewhat).15

One notable feature of Darwin’s moral view is its reliance ongroup, rather than individual selection. For example, considercourage. Darwin would want to say that courage (which we think is avirtue), is an evolved characteristic and the reason it evolved is itscontribution to fitness. But, we could ask, the fitness of whom?Clearly courage is not always does not always contribute to the fitnessof its possessor. Imagine that we have a society which exists incompetition with other nearby societies, and therefore needs(courageous) soldiers for its protection. Imagine that we were to taketwo men, who were equal in all but one respect: the first had thecourage to answer the call to defend his society, whereas the seconddid not and therefore chose another profession. It seems clear that thelife expectancy of the soldier would be shorter than the lifeexpectancy of the non-soldier. Therefore, courage would not actuallymake its possessor more fit (in terms of reproductive success),16 butrather less.

Darwin, however, wants to maintain that courage does increasefitness, since it is part of his theory that our moral sense evolvesbecause of selection pressures. Since courage does not increase thefitness of its possessor, he would need to measure fitness in a differentway, which is how he landed at group selection. He wrote that:

It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but aslight advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of thesame tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men andadvancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantageto one tribe over another. There can be not doubt that a tribe including manymembers who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity,obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to give aid to each other andto sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most othertribes, and this would be natural selection. At all times throughout the world tribeshave supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in theirsuccess, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thuseverywhere tend to rise and increase (Darwin 1871, 166).

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15 A wonderful book this discusses this topic is Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue: Human Instinctsand the Evolution of Cooperation. Ridley not only points out that no human society lacks moral norms,but makes the stronger claim that many moral norms are universal among all human societies. Examplesare prohibitions on killing and stealing, as well as the expectation that respect should be shown toparents. See also Brown 1991.

16 Let us assume that there are not other factors involved, such as the soldier appearing moreattractive to members of the opposite sex.

For example, imagine that there are now two groups, only one ofwhich has some members who are courageous and therefore becomesoldiers. The group that has soldiers would be able to protect itselfand would therefore persist, whereas the other group would have nosuch protection and would perish. Thus courage increases the fitnessof the group whose individuals possess it, while not benefiting thoseindividuals themselves (and even perhaps harming them). As Darwinindicated, such stories could be told about any number of virtues.

Thus Darwin thought that, by invoking group selection, he couldcome up with the selection pressures that would have led to theformation of modern man’s moral sense. Unfortunately, groupselection is largely unpopular in biological circles; even if moralphilosophers were to find Darwin’s tale compelling, many evolutionarybiologists would likely reject it out of hand.17 The reason groupselection is unpopular is that it is obviously the individual, not thegroup, that carries the material (genes) on which natural selectionoperates. So, if an individual could benefit at the expense of thegroup, selection would favor his proliferation (or, more precisely, theproliferation of his genes); selfish individuals would come to dominatethe population. Even those who support group selection wouldacknowledge the intra-group advantages of selfish behavior and wouldposit associative selection pressures, they would then have to establishcontrary inter-group pressures that would oppose (i.e., diminish oroutweigh, depending on their strength) the intra-group pressures.Regardless, there exist at least one set of selection pressures that, atbest, weaken Darwin’s account and, at worst, make it implausible.

Darwin himself was never comfortable with his reliance on groupselection; the only way to reconcile it with his biological views was tolook at the group as some sort of super-organism, which certainlyseems to be a stretch (Ruse 2001, 206). Nevertheless, he had observedinsect colonies where some members were sterile (e.g., wasps, bees,and ants), and he thought that this gave support to group selection. Ifselection operated on the individual, rather than the group, one wouldnot expect to see sterile beings. So Darwin thought that the existence


17 Group selection was powerfully challenged (William 1966). Richard Dawkins has continued theassault against group selection, and even against the traditional understanding of individual selection, byarguing that selection operates on the level of the gene rather than the group (or even the individual),see (Dawkins 1982a and 1982b). Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson have attempted to resuscitategroup selection by presenting a more sophisticated model than the naïve version which was commonlyexorcised since Williams’s work. However, some critics regard their revised version as a theoreticalpossibility but unlikely to have played a substantial role in the evolution of most species. See (Sober1984) , (Wilson 1989, 257-272), and (Wilson and Sober 1994, 585-654; 1998).

of such creatures lent credibility to group selection.18 Nevertheless, hewas never fully comfortable with this notion, and was worried that itundermined his theory.

Also in the Descent, Darwin argued that the moral sense wouldevolve in four stages. First, protohumans would develop a set of socialinstincts that would unify them into a common society. Secondly, theindividuals in the society would develop sufficient intellects to tend tothese instincts, even in the presence of other urges. Remember that,for Darwin, morality and intellect developed together; the former wasa consequence of the latter, so until sufficient intelligence evolved inman, morality would be impossible. Third, language would have toevolve so that society members could communicate with each other.And finally, society members would develop habits of caring for eachother and attending to each other’s needs. Darwin thought that thesocial instincts would be of two sorts. First, there would be thoseimpulsive instincts, such as anger, and secondly, there would be themore calm and persistent social instincts that do not have the sameimmediate force, such as love for one’s children.19 He thought that, asman developed intellectually, he would come to realize that, if he wereto help others, he might receive help in return (contemporaryevolutionary biologists refer to this concept as reciprocal altruism)(Richards 1999, 143; also Darwin 1871, 72-73).

An important feature of Darwin’s account of the genesis of moralityis that moral action is not motivated by self-interest, but rather forconcern for the overall welfare of society-he admits that moral actionmight well not be in the interest of the individual. In this sense,Darwin’s theory would oppose contractarians, such as Hobbes, whosuggested that man enters into moral society motivated by self-interest, because pre-moral life would be intolerable (Hobbes 1960).Darwin had read John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism (which came outtwo years after the Origin), but also disagreed with Mill that moralaction was (or should be) executed in order to maximize totalaggregate happiness. Rather, Darwin thought that moral actionhappened spontaneously, guided by our social instincts. Thoughutilitarianism does not necessarily require conscious deliberation for

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18 One of the most important developments in evolutionary biology in the past thirty years has beenthe ability to account for Darwin’s ideas without abandoning individual selection.

19 Interestingly, Darwin’s observations are consistent with Hume’s theory of the passions. Hume, likeDarwin, posited a metaphysical and phenomenological difference between anger, which he classified asan original passion and love, which he classified as a secondary and indirect passion. Hume also positedanother group of secondary passions, the direct passions, which could be either calm or violent.

moral action (or conscious application of the hedonic calculus), it isinteresting to observe that Darwin thought that morality could beentirely instinct driven. Oddly, Darwin thought that intellectnecessarily gave rise to the moral sense but, once the moral sensecame into existence, he seemed to think that it was self-propelling andno longer had a need for the intellect.

I think that Darwin’s ideas on morality have been dramaticallyundervalued. In fact, many of his ideas have anticipated currentdevelopments in sociobiology. What I personally find most excitingabout his ideas is that he does not commit the naturalistic fallacy,which we shall encounter later in this paper. Many of the otherevolutionists who have tried to develop ethical systems havecommitted logical errors that have rendered their theories useless, butDarwin does not. The reason is that he has fairly modest goals: toexplain the genesis of morality. Nowhere in his ethical writings doesoffer normative guidance; rather, he is interested in the developmentof man’s moral sense. I think that, as an evolutionist, this is exactlythe right approach and one that Herbert Spencer and others wouldhave been wise to follow. Darwin’s work on ethics is certainly notsystematic, and it leaves a lot of important questions unanswered. Buthis primary thesis, that man’s moral sense is a product of evolution, isone should be appreciated and considered. I will now turn toDarwin’s contemporary, Herbert Spencer, who had far more loftygoals for his evolutionary ethics, and whose work has been heavilycriticized.

Herbert Spencer

Though Darwin was certainly interested in morality, it wasobviously not his primary investigation. Herbert Spencer, Darwin’sfellow Englishman, was the first evolutionist to seriously question theethical implications of evolution and, in fact, all of Spencer’s manypublished volumes culminated in his Principles of Ethics (Spencer1873a). Spencer, who was a well-known and respected philosopher inhis time, wrote on a wide variety of topics with the ambition ofcreating a ‘Synthetic Philosophy’; to this end, he wrote The Principlesof Biology, The Principles of Sociology, The Principles of Sociology, allof which went on to be textbooks used at major universities.However, Spencer thought that all of these works were foundationalfor his work on ethics. As evidence of this, he suspended work onfurther volumes of his Principles of Sociology because he feared that he


may not live to complete his work on ethics. As he wrote in hisautobiography:

I begin to feel that it is quite a possible thing that I may never get through boththe other volumes of the Principles of Sociology, and that, if I go on writing them,and not doing anything towards the Principles of Morality till they are done, itmay result in this last subject remaining untreated altogether; and since the wholesystem was at the outset, and has ever continued to be, a basis for a right rule oflife, individual and social, it would be a great misfortune if this…should remainundone (Spencer 1904, 369-370).

And, as he wrote in the preface to the Principles of Ethics, ‘To leavethis purpose unfulfilled after making so extensive a preparation forfulfilling it, would be a failure…of which I do not like to contemplate’(Spencer 1873a, 31-32). There is certainly no doubt as to theimportance the Spencer placed upon the working out his ethicalsystem; what remains to be seen is why he thought that all of his otherwork led towards this end.

Unfortunately, the legacy that Spencer has left is not one that istremendously favorable. Contrary to his hopes, his ethical system hasnot endured as he would have liked and, even worse, was almostinstantly criticized upon its deliverance by well-known thinkers suchas T.H. Huxley,20 Henry Sidgwick21 and G.E. Moore (Moore 1903).Furthermore, Spencer is most often remembered for his coinage of‘survival of the fittest’ (which Darwin used interchangeably with‘natural selection’ in the 5th and 6th editions of The Origin) and hisSocial Darwinism (which has nothing to do with Darwin and wouldbe more aptly named Social Spencerianism). These ideas have ledmany to think that Spencer’s ethics are decidedly unethical; considerhis following remarks against the British poor-laws:

Besides an habitual neglect of the fact that the quality of a society is physicallylowered by the artificial preservation of its feeblest members, there is an habitualneglect of the fact that the quality of a society is lowered morally andintellectually, by the artificial preservation of those who are least able to take careof themselves…For if the unworthy are helped to increase, by shielding themfrom that mortality which their unworthiness would naturally entail, the effect isto produce, generation after generation, a greater unworthiness (Spencer 1873b).

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20 Huxley, who had a close friendship with Spencer before the two got in a disagreement aboutethics, criticized Spencer’s views in numerous writings and private correspondences. The most significantattack on Spencer’s position, however, came in Huxley’s well-attended Romanes lecture at Oxford. Thislecture is entitled ‘Evolution and Ethics’ and appears in (Huxley 1896-1902).

21 Sidgwick condemns Spencer’s position most directly in Sidgwick 1902), but also in his morefamous The Methods of Ethics (Sidgwick 1907).

Finally, both ‘survival of the fittest’ and Social Darwinism havebeen negatively associated, whether fairly or unfairly, with variouseugenics movements, most notably that of Nazi Germany.22

For these reasons, many might consider Spencer’s project, that ofdeveloping a system of ethics based on evolution, to be a failure. Ifthis were true, it would still be important to discuss Spencer’s views,both because they are historically important and, perhaps morerelevant to the philosopher, because we can learn from his failures andperhaps use them as a guide to developing a more successful systemof evolutionary ethics. However, several contemporary commentatorshave been dubious as to whether or not Spencer’s views should be soeasily dismissed.23 Just because eugenicists have appealed to Spenceris not a reason to assume that he was wrong; they may have, and mostlikely did, misunderstand his theory. Furthermore, even if they didnot, blaming Spencer for penning the ideas that later underscoredtheir movements would be tantamount to blaming Galileo for theadvent of aerial bombing. As to the more substantive criticisms of hisethics, especially by Sidgwick and Moore, it can plausibly been arguedthat they attack a caricature of his position rather than his actualposition; if this were true, the criticisms would obviously beineffective. Finally, as to the criticism that Spencer was unsympatheticto the plight of the poor, it could plausibly be argued that it wasprecisely because of his sympathy for the poor that he was so opposedto the British welfare system; I will discuss this possibility below. Witha compassion for Spencer’s tarnished legacy and an optimism that hisethics has been historically undervalued, I now turn to a discussion ofhis theory.24

Spencer’s ethics was based upon the principle that the moral end ofman was happiness. He had two separate arguments for this claim.First, he thought that claiming any other end would result from a


22 As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, ‘He who wants to live must fight, and he who does not want tofight in this world where eternal struggle is the law of life has no right to exist’; this statement (andothers) has been given as evidence of Hitler’s endorsement of ‘Spencer’s views’, which Hitler seems tohave misunderstood or, at a minimum, misrepresented. See (Bullock 1991, 141).

23 (Richards 1987) is a brilliant book that includes, in addition to a detailed historical survey ofevolutionary ethics, a positive account that might be loosely construed as neo-Spencerian. Also see(Thomson 1995 and 1999, 473-484).

24 It should be noted that Spencer’s moral theory, though most explicitly discussed in The Principlesof Ethics, had been formulated in several volumes, spanning backwards to Social Statics and over thirtyyears. Furthermore, his writing lacks the tight argumentation that most contemporary analyticphilosophers would (understandably) find attractive. For these reasons, getting a hold of his ethicaltheory is somewhat like ‘rather like trying to grab a fat eel.’ (Richards 1987, 308). Nevertheless, I believethat presentation that I offer fairly captures the central tenets and is uncontroversial.

confusion between means and ends and, secondly, he thought that allother ethical systems either explicitly or implicitly endorsed Mill’sGreatest Happiness Principle (Richards 1987, 305). However, Spencerobjected to the idea that humans either did or, more importantly,should consciously try to maximize the happiness brought about bytheir actions.25 Rather, Spencer thought what contributed to themaximization of happiness was social evolution (i.e., the evolution ofsociety). Though this position need not be at odds with Mill’sutilitarianism, which need only be committed to idea that therightness of an action is determined by whether or not it maximizeshappiness and can by silent as to the psychological mechanism thatleads to the agent’s action (e.g., rational deliberation or evolvedintuition),26 it is important to observe the importance that Spencer isalready beginning to place upon evolution as being central to thepotential for moral action.

Though Spencer endorsed the Greatest Happiness Principle, it isuseful to distinguish his position from Mill’s. Spencer certainlythought that happiness was the ultimate end of man, but he thoughtthat this happiness was to be found in justice and the individual’sacquisition of the maximal freedoms consistent similar freedoms forall (rather than in hedonistic pleasure as Mill thought). Because of thisbelief, Spencer thought that an ethical system should have as its aimthe achievement of the state of affairs consistent with justice andmaximal freedoms for all, since these concepts were inextricablylinked to happiness. The reason that justice is so important is thatSpencer thinks that freedoms will follow from it (as opposed toslavery, which is unjust and restrictive of freedoms). But why arefreedoms important? Spencer thought that maximal freedoms wouldallow for the greatest variability on which evolution could act and thatthis variability, in turn, would provide the necessary means to bringabout improved states of affairs in the world (Thompson 1999, 476).

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25 Because of this objection, Mill labeled Spencer an ‘anti-utilitarian’ in his ‘Utilitarianism’, which ranin serial form in Fraser’s Magazine during 1861. Through private correspondence, Spencer assured Millthat he did not dispute the Greatest Happiness Principle, and only wished to make the comment thatman neither did nor should consciously pursue maximization of happiness. Since this latter belief did notnecessarily run contrary to anything that Mill was arguing for, Mill seemed appeased and commented assuch in a lengthy footnote when Utilitarianism was published in its entirety in 1863.

26 Contemporary moral theorists often draw a distinction between a ‘standard of right and wrong’ anda ‘decision procedure.’ Spencer and Mill can both be read as assenting to utilitarianism as a standard of rightand wrong (i.e., both agree that the right action is the one that maximizes happiness). What Spencer meansto deny, however, is that commitment to the Greatest Happiness Principle suggests a decision procedure(i.e., he would deny that it follows from the fact that we should maximize happiness that we shouldconsciously try to maximize happiness). For an important articles on this distinction, see (Railton 1984).

This belief partially followed from his Lamarckianism (the beliefthat acquired traits could be inherited), but an example can help ussee why he would think this way. Imagine that, because of restrictedfreedoms, all of the members in society were more or less the same(i.e., they all ate the same things, worked at the same factory, lived insimilar accommodations, had the same educations, etc.). Because oftheir similarities, there would be little that evolution could give us inthe second generation other than more of the same (assuming thepersistence of background conditions). Thus, no development(physical, intellectual, etc.) would ensue. Now, consider a highlydiverse society whose individuals differed in all the ways that theywere similar above. In this society, given differential survival andreproductive rates, evolution would produce future generations inwhich the more highly adapted individuals came to dominate and theless adapted individuals ceased to exist. As individuals became morehighly adapted, they would have more freedoms (physical, intellectual,etc.), which would translate into more ‘happiness’.27

Spencer thought that there were three evolutionary ends of humanconduct which furthered the ultimate goal of equal freedom (Spencer1873a, 58-60; Richards 1987, 304). First, there was the goal of self-preservation; behaviors were evolutionarily superior if theycontributed to the fitness of the agent. Secondly, behaviors wereevolutionarily superior insofar as they contributed to the fitness ofone’s progeny. And, finally, actions that contributed to overall societalwelfare would also be favored by evolution-this followed fromSpencer’s partial adherence to group selection. Though each of thesethree claims may be uncontroversial, it was Spencer’s next step thatwas the ambitious one: he endeavored to show that theseevolutionary ends were also moral ends. If that were true, then hethought that evolutionary laws would also be moral laws andtherefore require our acquiescence (Richards 1987, 304). In order toshow that these evolutionary ends were also moral ends, he tried toshow how their pursuit (i.e., the pursuit of the health and safety ofthe individual, his progeny, and his society) would tend to increasehappiness in the world. As I discussed above, he thought thathappiness was the ultimate end and so, if he could show that theends of evolution contributed to happiness, then he thought that he


27 As Moore would point out, it is not clear why we should think that greater freedom ensuresgreater happiness. To borrow Mill’s example, consider Socrates (who has many freedoms) contrastedwith a pig (who has fewer). However, suppose that Socrates is unhappy, whereas the pig is not (at leastas measured in terms of quantity of pleasure if not quality). See Moore 1903, 51-52.

would have established the necessary link between evolution andethics.

Spencer argued that evolution furthered happiness by observingthat ‘individuals of most worth, as measured by their fitness to theconditions of existence, shall have both the greatest benefits, and thatinferior individuals shall receive smaller benefits, or suffer greaterevils, or both’ (Spencer 1873a, 2:25). This certainly seems right;individuals that are better adapted to their environments are happier(and enjoy greater freedoms), than those that are less adapted to theirenvironments. Since evolution leads to higher degrees of adaptation, itwould also lead to greater happiness. Furthermore, as Richards nicelyobserves, ‘organisms would generally be led to engage in life-sustaining acts through the allure of pleasure; those individuals whofound that life-sustaining activity generally and consistently producedmisery would cease the struggle for existence’ (Richards 1987, 306-307; Spencer 1873a, 1:118).

For these reasons, evolution brings with it greater happiness and,therefore, shares the same end as morality. Therefore, Spencerthought, evolutionary laws were also moral laws.

It is also interesting to investigate Spencer’s thoughts on altruism;he discussed the topic at length and reasonably thought that altruismwas a necessary hallmark of moral behavior.28 Furthermore, Spencer’sdiscussion on altruism is especially important given that he is oftencriticized for comments that he made regarding the British poor-lawswhich are perceived to be decidedly opposed to altruism yetnevertheless allegedly follow from his moral theory. Spencer conceivedof different types of altruism, the most basic of which was familyaltruism. Parents who were not sufficiently altruistic to their childrenwould run that their children would not reproduce. This lack ofaltruism, if heritable, would lead to the ‘disappearance from futuregenerations of the nature that is not altruistic enough–so decreasingthe average egoism’ (Spencer 1873a, 1:234) Conversely, altruisticparents would beget children who would be more likely to reproduceand thus the incidence of altruism (again assuming its heritability)would increase in the general population.29 Spencer also discussed

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28 Spencer defines altruism as any action, unconscious or conscious, that ‘involves expenditure ofindividual life to the end of increasing life in other individuals’; we might be more inclined to definealtruism as a personal sacrifice for the benefit of another. (Richards 1987, 310).

29 We might also note that overly altruistic tendencies would vanish over time since those who wereoverly altruistic would be at a reproductive disadvantage as compared with those who were only properlyaltruistic. As Spencer remarked, ‘every species is continually purifying itself from the unduly egoisticindividuals, while there are being lost to it the unduly altruistic individuals.’ (Spencer 1873a, 1: 234).

societal altruism (as opposed to the more narrow familial altruism),and gave two arguments as to why it would develop (Richards 1987,310). First, Spencer appealed to group selection. He thought that thesociety that was less altruistic would do less well off than an altruisticsociety, and therefore be selected against. In the future, altruisticsocieties, given differential advantages relative to non-altruisticsocieties, would come to dominate. Secondly, he thought thatmembers of society would be inclined toward altruistic behaviorbecause ‘other-regarding actions conduce to self-regardinggratifications by generating a genial environment’ (Spencer 1873a,1:241) Spencer therefore thought that rational individuals would, attimes, act altruistically toward non-family members because of thesegratifications and the prospect of a favorable environment. Hesummed up his attitude toward altruism under the more general lawthat ‘if the constitution of the species and its conditions of existenceare such that sacrifices, partial or complete, of some of its individuals,so subserve the welfare of the species that its numbers are bettermaintained than they would otherwise be, then there results ajustification for such sacrifices’ (Spencer 1873a, 23, emphasis added).

Given that Spencer thought that altruism was morally justified, itseems confusing that his attitudes toward the poor have been soheavily criticized. I think that these criticisms mark one of the mostcommon misinterpretations of Spencer’s philosophy. Of course, hedoes not help himself with quotes such as the following:

We must call those spurious philanthropists, who, to prevent present misery,would entail greater misery upon future generations. All defenders of a poor-lawmust, however, be classed among such…Blind to the fact that under the naturalorder of things, society is constantly excreting its unhealthy, imbecile, slow,vacillating, faithless members, these unthinking, though well-meaning, menadvocate an interference that not only stops the purifying process, but evenincreased the vitiation—absolutely encourages the multiplication of the of thereckless and incompetent by offering them an unfailing provision, and discouragesthe multiplication of the competent and provident by heightening the prospectivedifficulty of maintaining a family (Spencer 1851, 323-324, emphasis in original).

Though such passages (and there is no shortage) have beenreceived quite critically, there is no reason to think that Spencermanifested any animosity or ill-will towards the less fortunate. Rather,I think that he is best interpreted as merely making a critical socialcommentary on the state of the British poor-laws during his time.30


30 For a similar interpretation, see Ruse 2001, 74-5; Richards 1987, 302-3.

Spencer’s primary objection was that the system was constructed insuch a way that people had every incentive to qualify for benefits andno incentive to pursue their own livelihoods (he did not object tobenefits for the elderly or those otherwise unable to work).Furthermore, he thought that unfair restrictions were placed uponthose who had to pay into the system since those who workedsubsidized those who did not. In all, this process would consist insocial devolution since, over time, skills and motivations wouldatrophy. Since Spencer thought that social evolution was morallyincumbent upon society, he thought that social devolution wasobviously immoral, as were its constitutive practices.

In general, Spencer favored any laissez-faire political scheme overany of its rivals since he thought that freedom was one of the chiefconstituents of happiness, which was the ultimate moral end and,furthermore, state intervention would impede social evolution (Farber1994, 41-42; Richards 1987, 303). The problem with the poor-lawswas thus two-fold: they both fostered devolution and restrictedpersonal liberties by mandating compulsory payments into the system(by the affluent). As we saw above, Spencer thought that altruismwould be justified if it were to increase total aggregate happiness.Therefore, we could conclude that he would be of the opinion thatforced altruism would rarely serve this function. Spencer was certainlynot opposed to philanthropy, merely the forced kind. Two of his mostfamous disciples, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie donatedexorbitant sums to charity; Rockefeller tithed to his church, to generalcharities, and the University of Chicago, whereas Carnegie gaveextensively to the development of public libraries (Ruse 2001, 75-76).These are the sorts of altruism that Spencer would adamantly support:by contributing to the intellectual and spiritual health of society, socialevolution would surely follow.

What should we take from Spencer’s evolutionary ethics? First, weshould appreciate his attempt to forge a link between evolution andmorality. Whereas Darwin was primarily interested in describing thebiological origins of the moral sense, it was Spencer who firstsearched for moral justifications for evolution. Secondly, I think thatwe should recognize that Spencer’s ideas have been oftenmisunderstood and historically undervalued. Finally, and mostimportant philosophically, his central thesis that evolutionary laws aremoral laws is one that warrants more discussion. It was this thesis thathis critics were quick to attack and on which the plausibility ofevolutionary ethics largely hangs. I will now turn to those critics.

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3. Thomas Henry Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley is perhaps most commonly remembered asan ardent defender of evolution; he allegedly once referred to himselfas ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ and the moniker has certainly stuck. Darwinwas incredibly averse to controversy and confrontation and, becauseof this and his suspect health, was far more inclined to stay at hometo write than to publicly champion his causes. Huxley, however,eschewed neither controversy nor confrontation, and it was often himthat publicly spoke out in defense of evolution.31 Undoubtedly themost famous of these defenses came at the Oxford meeting of theBritish Association in 1860, just a few months after the publication ofThe Origin. At this meeting, the young Huxley debated evolutionagainst Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. As an observer of the encounterrecalled almost forty years later, Wilberforce went first and:

In a light, scoffing tone, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution;rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to hisantagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through hisgrandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?

Shortly thereafter:

Huxley slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure, stern and pale, veryquiet and very grave, he stood before us and spoke those tremendous wordswhich no one seems sure of now, nor, I think, could remember just after theywere spoken, for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in nodoubt as to what it was. He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor;but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts toobscure the truth. No one doubted his meaning, and the effect was tremendous.One lady fainted and had to be carried out; I, for one, jumped out of my seat.32

Though the details may be somewhat contentious, historianscertainly take this debate to constitute one of the most importantevents in the course of the popularization of evolution.33 This is the


31 It is a matter of ongoing debate just how much Huxley bought into natural selection, that he tookevolution to be true is obvious, but some doubt is left as to the mechanism to which he subscribed.

32 ‘Grandmother’s Tale,’ Macmillian’s Magazine 78 (1898): 425-435. Leonard Huxley, Thomas’s son,draws off this report when giving his account in Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley (New York: D.Appleton, 1900) 1: 197-202.

33 No less significant was John Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’ which took place in Tennessee in 1925 (alsoless well-known as State of Tennessee v. John Scopes). In this trial, John Scopes was prosecuted forteaching evolution in a public school. The trial pitted Clarence Darrow, a famous defense lawyer, againstWilliam Jennings Bryan, former U.S. congressman and three-time Democratic presidential nominee.

case not so much because of the actual content of the debate, whichis somewhat comical, but because of the symbolic significance:Huxley, at age thirty-five and already well-respected, challengesWilberforce, twenty years his senior, and both welcomes evolution andlevies a public and humiliating insult. This certainly affected thepsychological dimension of the evolution debate, as some becamemore wary to identify with the aged and beaten anti-evolutionistwhile, at the same time, embracing the exciting Huxley and his (andDarwin’s) evolution.

Though this anecdote compromises the entirety of most people’sknowledge of Huxley, he is also a significant figure in our discussionof evolutionary ethics. Huxley became more interested in ethics laterin his career, and his views quite conspicuously opposed those ofSpencer, though Huxley rarely mentioned Spencer by name. In fact,the two had been very close friends for many years until a riftdeveloped between them in regards to some of Huxley’s ethical work;Huxley partially thought that Spencer had accused him of plagiarismand partially thought that Spencer acted condescendingly in hisrefusal to criticize some of the conclusions that Huxley had drawnfrom common starting points (Richards 1987, 314-316). Though thetwo reconciled shortly before Huxley’s death, it was theirdisagreements over ethics that led to their serious, though perhapsimmature, break in friendship. In earlier writings, Huxley took issueswith Spencer’s endorsement of a laissez-faire political system, arguinginstead for public education for the lower classes (Huxley 1871, 251-289). However, these disagreements culminated in Huxley’s celebratedRomanes lecture at Oxford in 1893 in which Huxley made thinly-veiled criticisms against Spencer and, more generally, was extremelycritical of the plausibility of deriving normative legitimacy fromevolution. It is from this lecture that we can gain the best insight intoHuxley’s moral views.

However, before turning to Huxley’s Romanes lecture, it can beillustrative to look at how his ethical views were formed. In 1860,Huxley’s son Noel died and, in 1887, his favorite daughter Mariandied. Though Huxley was deeply affected by the deaths of bothchildren, Marian’s death was especially hard on him; many of thosearound him noticed severe (and lasting) emotional changes in him.Furthermore, it came at a time when he was beginning to do his work

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Though Scopes lost the trial, Darrow certainly got the better of Bryan, who was repeatedly humiliated.Consequently, the evolutionary theory began to garner more support by the American public.Incidentally, Scopes was fined a mere $100, which was never collected.

on ethics, beginning with essays in the same year and culminating inhis Romanes lecture six years later. There is no doubt that thesedeaths, and especially Marian’s, deeply affected Huxley’s ethical views.In particular, he saw that nature was indifferent to human life andwrote that it was hard to take solace in ‘the reflection that the terriblestruggle for existence tends to final good, and that the suffering of theancestor is paid for by the increased perfection of the progeny’(Huxley 1888, 198). He had already begun to question Spencer’sclaim that evolution and morality aimed at the same ends—the loss ofhis children had convinced him that nature could be mean and unjustand there were certainly not the ends at which morality aimed. Theseobservations led to the formation of Huxley’s core moral belief, thatsince nature (and therefore evolution) could be decidedly immoral, itwould follow that moral behavior would consist in opposing thenatural processes that led to these unjust outcomes, not embracing it.

In his Romanes lecture, he observed that ‘grief and evil fall, like therain, upon both the just and the unjust’; in the state of nature, thebiologically fit survive, but not necessarily the most morally fit (Huxley1893, 60; Richards 1987, 316). In his most direct opposition toSpencer (and perhaps the most direct exposition of his view), he wenton to argue that ‘social progress means a checking of the cosmicprocess at every step and the substitution for it of another which maybe called the ethical process the end of which is not the survival ofthose who may happen to be the fittest…but of those who are ethicallybest’ (Huxley 1894a, 81). Even if, as Darwin thought, the moralsentiments had evolved, evolution could only ‘teach us how the goodand evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it isincompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good ispreferable to what we call evil that we had before’ (Huxley 1894a, 82).

When Huxley published his Romanes lecture, he added a lengthyprolegomena which included an extended metaphor in which hehoped to clarify his central point (Huxley 1894b, 35). In thisprolegomena, he argued that ethical and cosmic (i.e., natural)processes were antagonistic. His example was horticultural; he askedthe reader to imagine the perfect garden from both the aesthetic (i.e.,moral) point of view and to compare this to the garden that was inthe grasp of natural law. The garden that was left to its own naturaldevices would, of course, develop weeds, attract parasites, etc. Thesewould, in turn, lead to the gradual deterioration of the ideal garden.However, the ardent horticulturist would oppose these naturalprocesses and, in so doing, improve the status of the garden. Thus thebetter garden is the one in which the natural law is opposed. Huxley’s


metaphor, excepting his somewhat hasty slide from aesthetics tomorality, purports to be a fairly straightforward demonstration of theopposition that exists (at least sometimes) between the moral law andthe natural law. Given this opposition, Huxley thought, we mustoppose the natural law (including evolution) if we are to be moral.And, though Huxley did not explicitly argue that this opposition wasomnipresent, we can safely assume that he thought it to be so.Therefore, morality requires continuous battle against natural forces,of which evolution is certainly a large constituent. Huxley makes hisconclusion explicit: ‘Let us understand, once and for all, that theethical process…depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, stillless in running away from it, but in combating it’ (Huxley 1894a, 83).

What should we take from Huxley? Like Spencer, Huxley was oneof the early thinkers of his bent; whereas Spencer tried to derivemoral directives from natural law, Huxley tried to show that such aderivation was impossible. Huxley certainly deserves some credit theperspective that he contributed (he was, after all, a scientist more thana philosopher), even if we might find his argumentation suspect.Specifically, we may find his metaphor to be wanting–some mightthink that his analogy is quite weak or otherwise ineffectual. However,his failings, if any, are not of tremendous philosophical interest sincehis ideas (and most importantly his attacks on evolutionary ethics) willbe furthered by later thinkers, most notably Henry Sidgwick and G.E.Moore. Since these philosophers will provide similar but strongerideas and incorporate more rigorous argumentation, I propose tosuspend evaluation of Huxley’s critique until the stronger versions areon the table.

Henry Sidgwick, G.E. Moore, and the Spirit of David Hume

The entrance of Henry Sidgwick into the debate on evolutionaryethics is extremely significant. First, the criticisms that he wouldultimately provide of any attempts to derive normativity fromevolutionary laws are ones that survive intact to this day and, in manypeople’s eyes, are the Achilles’ heel of evolutionary ethics.34 Thoughthese same ideas achieved more clear exposition in the works of G.E.Moore, it was Sidgwick who first provided them. While it is certainlytrue that Sidgwick’s ideas derived, in some sense, from the work of

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34 For an optimistic view, see Ruse (1986). Farber (1994) is more representative.

David Hume over a century earlier, it was Sidgwick who was the firstto successfully bring these ideas to bear on evolutionary ethics. Forthese insights, he is deserving as a central figure in the history ofevolutionary ethics. Secondly, Sidgwick’s entrance into the debateplays an important symbolic role: it is the first time that a moralphilosopher (as opposed to a natural scientist) has consideredattempts at evolutionary ethics. Moreover, it was not just any moralphilosopher, but rather Henry Sidgwick, the Knightsbridge Chair ofPhilosophy at Cambridge University, one of the most exclusive postsavailable to any moral philosopher. Sidgwick was arguably the secondmost important moral philosopher of the second half of thenineteenth century (behind Mill), and the fact that he foundevolutionary ethics to be a topic to which to devote some of hisattention was certainly noteworthy.

Moore, who was Sidgwick’s student and later became a professor atCambridge, followed Sidgwick in his discussions of evolutionaryethics. If anything, Moore’s status exceeds that of Sidgwick’s sinceMoore’s Principia Ethica is quite likely the most important bookwritten in moral philosophy in all of the twentieth century. Sidgwickand Moore’s entrance to the debate marks an important shift: itdemarcates a transition from evolutionary ethics as the dominion ofthe natural scientist to evolutionary ethics as the dominion of themoral philosopher.

The cynic might argue (correctly) that both Sidgwick and Moorethought that all attempts to derive evolutionary ethics were hopelesslyflawed. In both of their writings, Spencer (who they rightly took to bethe contemporary flag-bearer of evolutionary ethics) is practicallyridiculed; both philosophers were very harsh towards Spencer and hiswould-be followers. However, the point remains that evolutionaryethics made an important transition (if perhaps not a successful one)from the realm of science to the realm of philosophy. Both Spencerand Huxley wrote sprawling works with little in the way ofargumentation; the advent of the moral philosopher would signal anend to such sloppy methodology. If evolutionary ethics was going tobe plausible, it would have to be approached in a manner differentthan the way that it had been approached in the past. This wouldcertainly be an improvement. Furthermore, the ideas that Sidgwickand Moore offered (and which hearkened back to Hume) are criticalto any further investigation.

Sidgwick first became interested in Spencer’s ethical ideas in thefirst edition of his Methods of Ethics (1874). At the publication of thefirst edition, Sidgwick still had to go off of Spencer’s Social Statics


since Principles of Ethics was not published until almost twenty yearslater. Spencer’s ethical views developed from Social Statics throughThe Data of Ethics and culminated in the Principles of Ethics, the finaltwo-volume work. Sidgwick’s subsequent editions of the Methods ofEthics reflected the development of Spencer’s ethical thought,continuing all the way through Sidgwick’s final edition, the seventh,which was released over thirty years after the first. However, thoughthe Method of Ethics was Sidgwick’s most important work, it was hislectures at Cambridge in which he levied his most direct andsubstantial criticisms against Spencer.35

In these lectures, Sidgwick has three principal complaints aboutSpencer’s ethical theory. The first, which had already been made inthe first edition of the Methods of Ethics, was that Spencer’s theoryonly provided for the moral principles of an ideal society and wastherefore of very little use in reality; he lamented that Spencer’s ideascould have only an ‘indirect and uncertain…relation to the practicalproblems of actual life’ (Sidgwick 1907, 18; Richards 1987, 320).Sidgwick, who aimed to harmonize classical utilitarianism withintuitionism, often expressed his frustration with moral theories whichfound little application in the real world, and he thought thatSpencer’s theory was one of these.

There are, however, numerous responses that Spencer might havebeen inclined to make to this objection. First, since this first criticismappeared early enough to afford Spencer a chance at a response, wemight consider what Spencer actually said. Spencer’s answeredSidgwick by invoking a distinction that he had made as early as SocialStatics, which was that between ‘relative ethics’ and ‘absolute ethics’.Spencer thought that absolute ethics governed moral action in theideal society, whereas ‘relative ethics’ offered us the rules that wouldbe of pragmatic use in our (not ideal) society. Spencer was willing toacknowledge that, though part of his theory aimed at providingabsolute ethics (and was therefore victim to Sidgwick’s criticism), hehad also attempted to provide a system of relative ethics which couldbe used in actual societies. Sidgwick, however, was equallydisapproving of Spencer’s relative ethics, which he thought offeredlittle more than ‘moral bromides’ (Richards 1987, 320).

The second response that Spencer could have made (and mostironic given Sidgwick and Moore’s ultimate criticism) is that moralphilosophy need not be concerned with the real world at all; moral

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35 These have been republished as Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and J.Martineau (Sidgwich 1902).

philosophy aims to give us ideals to which we should strive. If thecentral tenets of a moral theory (such as Spencer’s which advocatedequal justice and freedom for all) are not of the sorts that can bereadily applied to pressing social issues (such as euthanasia orinternational trade tariffs), this need be a problem for the theoryitself, but merely unfortunate for those of us who do not know howto apply it. To further a discussion to which I alluded earlier, considerclassical utilitarianism. Critics have argued that utilitarianism isunhelpful (or, even worse, wrong!) because it is impossible for man,with limited knowledge and limited cognitive capacities, to applyBentham’s hedonic calculus at every turn. But the limited pragmaticvalue of such a theory has nothing to do with whether the theorycorrectly demarcates the difference between right and wrong action. Itmight well be the case that such a theory correctly identifies astandard of right and wrong but that an agent cannot apply thetheory; in this case he may have to incorporate heuristics, rules ofthumb, etc. Even if we do agree that ethical theories should ultimatelybe pragmatically applicable rather than purely academic discussions ofright and wrong (which is not an admission that I would be inclinedto make), it does not follow that theories of the latter characterizationare wrong, nor that they cannot offer some, albeit limited, guidance.

Sidgwick’s second objection was more compelling: he asked howSpencer proposed to justify the connection between the ends ofevolution and the ends of morality. If evolution aimed at thedevelopment of natural life, and morality aimed at maximal happiness,what reason was there to think that these two goals coincided?(Richards 1987, 321) Of course, Spencer had tried to show that bothevolution and morality took as their end the greatest happiness (whichSpencer understood not as maximal pleasure but rather as realizationof justice and freedom), but his arguments which aimed tosubstantiate the claim that the end of evolution was happiness werequite shaky. Sidgwick went on to point out that it might well be thecase that ethical dilemmas might arise in which the moral agent mustadjudicate between the life and happiness of one and the life andhappiness of another: ‘What is to be done if two ends–Life andHappiness–do not coincide, in any particular case, here and now? andwhose Life (or Happiness) is to be taken as standard by theindividual, if circumstances arise in which a choice has to be madebetween action conducive to his own Life (or Happiness), and actionconducive to the Life (or Happiness) of others?’ (Sidgwick 1902, 217)Spencer’s theory gives us no insights as to how such an adjudicationshould proceed (Mill’s utilitarianism, by contrast, does).


Again, however, this criticism is one of application of the theory,rather than one of the theory itself. Though Spencer did not respondexplicitly to these complaints of Sidgwick, it seems that Spencerwould say that, for example, in choosing whether to save one of twodrowning people, the morally correct action would be the one thatmaximizes overall happiness (i.e., freedom and justice). Unfortunately,Spencer’s conception of happiness leads to more complexquantification than Mill’s hedonism but there is no reason why, inprinciple, such a quantification could not proceed.

Sidgwick’s third objection is clearly the most important and,furthermore, the one on which Moore would expound. Of Spencer’stheory, Sidgwick asked ‘Why am I to seek the Greatest Happiness?’(Sidgwick 1902, 219) Sidgwick, we might assume, was willing to grantSpencer’s (dubious) biological assumption that evolution tendedtowards the greatest happiness but it was not clear to Sidgwick howanyone could possibly think that moral action consisted inaccommodating this trend. To create an analogy, we might look at oneof the more common laws of physics, gravity, and observe that gravitytends to make objects fall towards the ground. Now, it wouldcertainly seem quite odd to infer from this that it is morallyincumbent upon anyone to assist in things falling to the ground!

Sidgwick thus thought that there was a ‘gap in ethical construction’between physical law and moral law; as Richards remarks, Sidgwickthought that ‘the ‘oughtness’ of moral principles depended upon noempirical conditions for its force’ (Richards 1987, 322) (such asnatural law). Though both Spencer and Sidgwick agreed thathappiness was the ultimate end, Sidgwick thought that only reasoncould supply the necessary moral justification for the pursuit ofhappiness-the contingent coincident end of both moral action andevolution was insufficient warrant for the moral legitimacy ofevolution. Relatedly, he thought that facts (such as the fact ofevolution) were unable to produce moral imperatives. Unfortunately(and oddly), Sidgwick did not explain why he thought this was thecase, nor did he provide a substantial defense of his claim thatSpencer’s ethical theory leaped over a ‘gap’.

Fortunately, a young G.E. Moore was in attendance at Sidgwick’sSpencer lectures, and Moore did not hesitate to drive Sidgwick’s pointhome, thus coining the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ and, arguably, soundingthe death knell for evolutionary ethics. In Principia Ethica, which waspublished in the same year the Spencer died, 1903, Moore devotedconsiderable attention to Spencer’s views. For Moore, ‘good’ was asimple (i.e., not constructed of parts), non-natural (i.e., not

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determinable or measurable by any empirical means), undefinableproperty whose presence was to be intuited. Spencer, who held that‘good’ could be understood as ‘the greatest happiness’ or, morespecifically, ‘maximal freedom for all’, had already run afoul ofMoore’s conception of ‘good’ by thinking that any more informationcould be given about its nature. But, even worse, the definition thatSpencer offered for ‘good’ invoked natural concepts, ‘happiness’ and‘freedom’. Both happiness and freedom can be, at least in some way,empirically investigated and measured (e.g., happiness could bemeasured by serotonin release in the brain, whereas freedom could bemeasured by the number of acts available to the agent). It was invirtue of this latter infraction that Moore was especially critical.

Moore accused Spencer of committing the naturalistic fallacy,which consists in ‘identifying the simple notion which we mean by‘good’ with some other notion.’ (Moore 1903, 58) The equation of‘good’ with ‘happiness’ or ‘freedom’ was, Moore thought, such afallacy. In order to convince readers of this, he offered the ‘openquestion argument’. This ‘argument’ proceeded by observing that, if‘good’ meant the same as ‘promotes happiness’, the question ‘I knowthat x is good, but does x promote happiness?’ would be asnonsensical as asking ‘I know Jack is a bachelor, but is he anunmarried male?’ It is precisely because ‘bachelor’ means ‘anunmarried male’ that the second question is silly. And, according toMoore, the reason that the first question does not share thestrangeness of the second is because ‘good’ does not mean the sameas ‘promotes happiness’ — since we can meaningfully ask whether thegood promotes happiness, ‘good’ cannot be defined in terms ofpromoting happiness.

A very related line of reasoning had appeared earlier in the work ofDavid Hume, who famously wrote that:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have alwaysremark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way ofreasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerninghuman affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usualcopulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is notconnected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is,however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses somenew relation or affirmation, ‘tis necessary that it should be observ’d andexplain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seemsaltogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others,which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use thisprecaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded,that this small attention wou’d subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let


us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on therelations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason (Hume 1978).

In short, Hume argued that it was logically impossible to movefrom a set of purely factual premises to a normative conclusion. Forexample, the argument:

P1) Killing takes a human life.C) Killing is (at least prima facie) wrong.

is invalid; the truth of the conclusion is in no way necessitated bythe truth of the premise. Some further premise, such as ‘It is (at leastprima facie) wrong to take the life of a human’, would be necessary tomake the argument valid. In valid arguments (and excepting logicians’tricks such as addition), the content of the conclusion already appears,in some form, in the premises and, a fortiori, the transition fromfactual premises to a normative conclusion (with its introduction ofnormative concepts) will violate this requirement.

‘Hume’s Law’, as it has come to be known, is potentially violatedby Spencer’s ethical system. As some commentators have tried toargue, Spencer’s argument might be fashioned as follows:

P1) Evolutionary law aims at the survival of the fittest.Moral law aims at the survival of the fittest.

Needless to say, this argument is obviously invalid. And, if thisargument adequately represents Spencer’s views, then Spencerianethics should be rejected outright; this is the thrust of Hume’s Law asbrought to bear on evolutionary ethics.

There is, of course, a tremendous literature on both Moore’snaturalistic fallacy (and his associated open question argument) as wellas on Hume’s is/ought gap. Notable philosophers, such as John Searleand Philippa Foot, have downright denied Hume’s central claim,36

whereas numerous criticisms have been launched against Moore.Nonetheless, the point that they sought to make has becomeentrenched as one of the central tenets of moral philosophy which,even with some detractors, has been tremendously influential.

It is clear that Moore’s criticisms signaled the beginning of a longslumber for evolutionary ethics. As I said, Spencer had died the sameyear of Moore’s publishing, and was consequently unable to respond

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36 See Searle 1964. Foot has argued this idea variously, see especially Foot 1958. Many importantpapers have been reassembled in Hudson 1969.

to Moore (even if he would have had some potential response tooffer). Furthermore, nobody came to his defense; Moore’s criticismseemed so compelling that all parties involved figured that the sunhad set on evolutionary ethics. Aside from further criticism fromAmerican pragmatists William James and John Dewey,37 repeatedmissteps from Julian Huxley, the who did not share the pessimismtowards evolutionary ethics of his grandfather (Huxley J. 1943), andthe modest contributions of the unknown C.H. Waddington(Waddington 1942), there was little industry in evolutionary ethics fornearly three quarters of a century, until the advent of sociobiology.

As I said at the beginning, the verdict is still out on the revivalphase of evolutionary ethics, but the historical legacy that it must takeas its starting point is not favorable. Not surprisingly, the nextgeneration (with the exception of Robert Richards) has largelyabandoned Spencerian attempts to derive normative conclusions fromevolutionary law, and has instead chose to focus on the possibility ofevolution contributing to morality at a meta-ethical level.38 Or, inother words, most attempts have centered around the potential ofevolution to explain certain features of morality rather than to justifysubstantive moral conclusions. Regardless, the historical resultsgarnered by the above thinkers have shaped the current landscapeand will continue to delineate the prospects of evolutionary ethics inthe future.

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